December meme: Favourite female characters in Star Trek

[lizbee]

Question from crossinghades!

I was about to reply,

ALL OF THEM

. Then I remembered that's not exactly true.

Then I was going to reply,

JANEWAY

, which is true, but also leaves out a lot of really cool characters whom I love. SO.

Firstly, I posted on my "real" blog at great length about "Space Seed" and Wrath of Khan, and there's quite a lot of my feelings about female characters in TOS and the movies. (They mostly boil down to, "Nichelle Nichols is criminally underused, Saavik is amazing, it's shameful what JJ Abrams did to Carol Marcus.")

I came to Trek via TNG, so -- while Tumblr tells me it is Not Done to be a bit cool on TOS these days -- I'm pretty cool on TOS. IDK, guys, would it kill you to give Uhura more to do? Remember that time evil!Kirk tried to rape Janice Rand, and her recourse is to shamefully confess to her all-male senior officers? YEAH.

ANYWAY, as a wee child, I used to read feminist critiques of TNG, and its tendency to put women in nurturing roles, and go, "Yes, but they're awesome!" AND THEY ARE. But Crusher and Troi also spend much of the series being very gently soft spoken, and very mildly assertive, and it's frankly a breath of fresh air when Ro Laren turns up, speaking directly and generally kicking ass. (Keeping Yar would have maybe negated some of the overwhelming gentleness of Crusher and Troi, but season 1 wasn't exactly a great showcase for her character, so who knows?)

I mean, I love every single female character in TNG, but we have Crusher, Troi and later Guinan, all mostly gentle and empathetic characters. And when they break out of that mould, it's usually temporary, and in the service of Plot.

SO AWKWARDLY, I kind of stalled in my rewatch of DS9. So as much as I'd like to talk at length about how great Kira Nerys is, and also Dax and Kasidy Yates and a bunch of other female characters, I kind of can't. (I also stalled, like, two or three years ago? I should pick that up again.)

ON THE OTHER HAND, I am on the verge of rewatching Voyager, and that is going to be GREAT. Because Voyager had the most women, and all of my favourites, and was just generally AMAZING. Except for that time they ditched Kes in favour of Harry Kim. SORRY, STILL NOT OVER IT. (Although, the way things worked out in the long run, they should have just ditched Chakotay. STILL NOT OVER THAT, EITHER.)

(CERTAIN PEOPLE on my Tumblr dash are telling me, through gifs, that I should go back to Janeway/Chakotay shipping. WAS ONCE NOT ENOUGH? STOP THAT! No, don't stop, those gifs are great. If Tumblr had existed when I was 15, mine would be two-thirds J/C gifs, one-third Alanis Morissette lyrics.)

(Thank God Tumblr didn't exist when I was 15.)

(There would also be some ship wars and some unexamined misogyny. It really is good that social media didn't exist when I was a teen.)

IN CONCLUSION, Star Trek is full of great female characters, many of whom are not served well by the text. (Someone on Tumblr, in about the last 24 hours, made a really good post about how Lwaxana Troi is basically the embodiment of the writers' fear of female sexuality. If only I could remember who, so I could link it!) FURTHER IN CONCLUSION, I really need to finish season 4 of Archer so I can start Orange is the New Black and my Voyager rewatch.

Comments

[copracat]

(Someone on Tumblr, in about the last 24 hours, made a really good post about how Lwaxana Troi is basically the embodiment of the writers' fear of female sexuality. If only I could remember who, so I could link it!)

Ugh, I know, and coupled with having her romantically interested in Odo who was presented by the show as sexless and romantically safe. All I could ever think was how awesome a lover who could control every molecule of their body would be. There would be effectively no limit to how you could love each other.

[lizbee]

I know! I don't want to objectify Odo, but ... wow. (And also he sleeps in a bucket, which (a) no tedious fights over blankets, (b) A BUCKET.

[nam_jai]

I think if I rewatched Voyager, I'd really have to decide to flip the off switch on the J/C shipping mindset, so as to not have these continual flare-ups of irritation knowing how it would all turn out. Fortunately, there was plenty else I enjoyed about the show. (And though I shipped J/C, my real Voyager OTP was Tom/B'Elanna -- that's what would have filled up my theoretical Tumblr back in the day -- so I'm safe there.)

[purple_smurf]

Ensign Ro is my Trek spirit animal ♥ I may have pitched a fit over her last episode as a pre-teen, even if my stance has changed A Lot since then (thank God there was no internet in my house).

[sqbr]

If Tumblr had existed when I was 15, mine would be two-thirds J/C gifs, one-third Alanis Morissette lyrics

Haha yes me too. (Also pictures of Harry Kim being swoonworthy) WE ARE SO LUCKY TO HAVE DODGED THAT BULLET.

[yiduiqie]

no regrets my friend

[fahrbotdrusilla]

They should have kept Kes and ditched Chakotay AND Tom Paris. I like Harry.

[philippos42]

I don't remember ever thinking much about it--I was less than thrilled with TNG for various reasons--but losing Tasha Yar really drastically narrowed their range of female personalities in a dangerous way, eh?

[lizbee]

Yes! And sure, she wasn't that well-written in season 1, but no one was! Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if they'd kept her for seasons 3 and 4, ie, the absolutely great ones.